For the onces who are involved into story telling,I strongly recommend this book: Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence (yes the real Lawrence of Arabia).

Apart from the style (excelent), this is a masterpeice when it comesto characters descriptions in their physical and psychological aspects.

As often with secret agents, they have strong observation's habilities but the Lawrence ones where out of common mortal.

For training one's own narrative that can be applied in motion works I can't think of a better source of inspiration.The accuracy of the descriptions are simply outstanding.(and the dude knew how to write!)

Good read.

Ps: it's not the first time that a link can be made between inteligenceservice and artists (or artistical discipline). Remember Velasquez who was also a spy... In the end it uses the same habilities: observation and story to tell.If you look at the reports spys have made in the past, and read the cine notes, they arejust the same thing. In the end it's all about observing and transcribing.

Ps2: it's also interesting if you saw the movie but didn't read the book, you'll be verysurprised.

I agree it's a great book. I carried a copy in my backpack around Europe in the sixties - rereading it a couple of times.He certainly knew how to write - the stories goes that while taking the completed manuscript to the publishers, he lost it and had to rewrite the entire book from memory!Now that you've mentioned it I might just have to read it again!Cheers, Bob.